IDGAF

I know I’m not alone — Val concurs —  in finding this whole “carry on as normal, work, eat, sleep, repeat” shit a little hard to pay attention to. A little tricky to whip up any enthusiasm for much of anything, you know what I mean?

My grandson sports a hat that sums up how a lot of us are feeling…

There’s a band around my chest. A combination of tension and crappy breathing control. As well as a persistent, low-level, background hum, of a head-ache that doesn’t always succumb to paracetamol. So, I feel a little physically shitty but still, I know, am actually so much luckier, so much better off, than 99% of human-kind out there. This is a rant after all, but I’m incredibly fortunate — simply by virtue of an accident of birth — to have the time and security to write it.

And all this feeling like shit is caused by the same thing.

“And what is that”, you ask me?

Well, there’s a list…

There’s the Ukraine, a whole nightmare on its own — with the possible addition of some nuclear weapons going off, as an additional spice —  and one that’s only going to get a whole lot worse before it gets any better. There’s the complete ongoing cluster-fucks of Myanmar, Syria, Palestine, Afghanistan, Yemen, Tigray and a whole shed-load of smaller, slightly less costly (in deaths terms) ongoing wars, all of which are detailed on their own Wiki page for fucks’ sake and all of them also seem to have dropped off the (at least English) TV screens and reports.

And a government here — whose whole raison d’être is cruelty in all their actions, true inheritors of the Thatcher mantle — making it well-nigh impossible to even know the hoops you’re supposed to jump though or where the next pop-up visa place will suddenly appear from, to somehow grab the right stamp for you and your mum and grandparents and the 4-year old on your back, who’ve by now walked hundreds of miles through fucking hell-holes. To then be shat upon by the Tories.

Johnson’s government don’t want refugees, as they believe it’s ‘unpopular’. This isn’t just their planning & their design, but also comes via those who campaigned with ‘Breaking Point’ posters, via a complicit media, who suggested firing, firing on migrant boats & via those who continually degrade Muslims & brown people. Refugees are less worrying if white? The e.g. Nazi supporting Daily Mail would have you so believe. This anti-immigrant bile is a continued and indelible stain on this country. We patently aren’t fucking “better than that” as the politicians all so piously claim.

There’s Covid-19;  yeah, you remember that? All the way back in 2021/2022? It’s not gone away folks and is still killing (mainly) poor brown people in huge numbers but is also likely to have a highly successful come-back tour of the UK later this year. This government seems intent on killing off as many people as possible; those at the bottom of the food-chain and have removed any and all restrictions. Kinda like their “wars” on red-tape and health and safety measures (pace Grenfell) which, having been removed, magically only seem to benefit the owners, the bosses, the landlords. Surprising, eh?

Brexit; where do we even start in terms of the self-inflicted wound we bear? Maybe in 20 years time, when all the old, bigoted, racist, Daily Mail voters have died off, maybe then, wearily, we’ll go “hmmm, that EU, it wasn’t as bad as we thought, was it?” and we’ll petition them to be allowed back in. Maybe. If the planet is even habitable by then. After the Ukraine entry route was agreed today, a good friend described it thus:

Brexit, noun

1. To impose ruinous sanctions on yourself

2. To impoverish your children, grandchildren and great grandchildren

3. To position yourself irrevocably on the wrong side of history

4. To become a laughing stock

Oligarchs who’ve hollowed out so much of this country (literally sometimes in terms of the undermining multi-story basements they’ve dug in London) that I’m not sure we’ll recover from the damage that their money and their influence over the Tory party and the rich elite at the top of pretty much everything in this country, continues to do.

The economy is in ruins; normally I’d have a hollow laugh at the idea that late-stage capitalism is so totally and utterly fucked here. But this affects the everyday people, you and I, the poor, the dis-enfranchised, the disabled, the disadvantaged. People dying, daily from hunger. In the (supposedly) 3rd or 4th or whatever number it is that league table that the moronic sociopath Lixz Truss is claiming today.

Und so weiter, und so weiter, und so weiter….

OK, after that dread list, maybe I should put down what I do have to be thankful for, the people and things that keep me going, keep me alive and singing, keep me — comparatively — sane.

Val. Of course. Always. The sine qua non of my existence.

Kids and grand-kids

Work is sometimes a distraction (thanks Rich).

Food. Of course. You wouldn’t expect me not to say this now, would you?

Pigs.

More pigs

Always pigs.

Books, music. The heartbeat to my life. Always there; always reliable. I love this cover.

And the (not uniquely I know) continued hope that I will live to see a huge conflagration of the vanities, all of them burning in the Hell to which they’ve attempted (and succeeded in far too many cases) to consign any one who’s poor or brown or gay or disabled or disadvantaged in anyway. Roll the tumbrils.

And if you want to help, support the work by The World Central Kitchen team. They’re currently working hard in the Ukraine. But also in the other “forgotten” zones.

Finally, this is me and Val and the kids, cooking up a yakitori storm in our kitchen. Impressive work ethic eh?

Naaah, not really.

Much love to you all. We will get through this. Courage mon brave!